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Category: feminism

[Introductory Note: My intention in this post is to produce a succinct critique of feminism to which I (and, if they wish, others) can refer feminists and supporters of feminism and which, given its brevity, the latter may actually be expected to read. This is in contrast to my more in-depth treatment of the same topic in Why I am Not a Feminist.]

Feminists claim to champion ‘gender equality’. In reality, however, their advocacy for this cause has been, at best, highly selective.

The central tenet of feminism, then, is not the feminists’ ostensible (and loudly trumpeted) commitment to the notion of gender equality, since they have evidenced no consistent or even-handed commitment to this ideal.

Instead, the defining tenet of feminism is, not so much their belief in sexual equality, as their belief in sexual inequality – in other words their belief that women are oppressed and disadvantaged as compared to men.

The reality, however, is that, as in the examples of gender discrimination cited above, nothing could be further from the truth.

It is, in reality, men, not women, who are vastly overrepresented among the homeless,[10] the victims of violent crime,[11] the casualties in warfare,[12] the prison population,[13] suicides,[14] drug addicts[15] – in short, all the most disadvantaged groups within society and across the world.

Meanwhile, men are also by far the primary victims of sexual discrimination.

I have already listed just a few of the many forms of discrimination to which men are subject above.

However, rather than attempting to compile a comprehensive list of all the various spheres in which males discriminated against on account of their gender, then comparing this list against all those spheres in which women claim to be the victims of gender discrimination (an obviously daunting, if not impossible, task), let’s restrict ourselves solely to the most extreme and severe forms of sexual discrimination.

The most extreme forms of sex discrimination are, we can all surely agree, those where life itself is at stake – in other words, those forms of discrimination which condemn the person who is discriminated against to certain or probable death on account of the discrimination.

Here, in respect of what we might call ‘life or death discrimination’, it is almost always males who are the victims.[17]

Likewise, it is not only male soldiers, but also male civilians (especially, but not exclusively, so-called ‘battle-aged males’) who are deliberately targeted for killing on the grounds of their sex in warfare and genocides across the world[20] and throughout history.[21]

Likewise, to take another form of ‘life-or-death discrimination’, it is male offenders who are more often sentenced to death by the US courts, and more often actually executed, even as compared to female offenders the severity of whose offences is, by any measure, as culpable as that of the executed males.[23]

Indeed, in other parts of the world, discrimination against males in the application of the death penalty is explicit. Thus, the leading researcher in this area, Victor Streib of Ohio Northern University, reports that:

Compulsory enlistment for military service during wartime provides a final example of ‘life-or-death discrimination’ favouring females.

Although conscription has been practised by civilizations and nation-states for thousands of years,[25] and continues to be practised by a minimum of over eighty regimes around the world as of 2012,[26] it has almost always applied solely and exclusively to males, and never to men and women on anything like equal terms.[27]

This has, of course, entailed a massively elevated risk of death, as well as of permanent maiming and injury and, together with the deliberate selective targeting of male civilians, it responsible for the fact that males have represented the vast majority of casualties in warfare in every conflict for which reliable data exists.[28] Given that it involves forced labour, conscription is also arguably a form of slavery.[29]

____________

Against this overwhelming body of evidence that males are both worse-off than females in terms of outcomes, and discriminated against in favour of females in many spheres, including those where life itself is at stake, what evidence can the feminists marshal to buttress their claims that it is in fact women, not men, who are disadvantaged and ‘oppressed’?

In my experience debating with feminists, it seems to me that the latter most often cite two types of evidence:

The ‘gender pay gap’; and

The overrepresentation of males in many high-visibility and high-status occupations (e.g. in government and business).

Let’s look at these two disparities in greater detail.

________________

It is true that, on average, men earn higher salaries than do women. However, there are two reasons this cannot be viewed as evidence of male privilege.

For example, men are overrepresented in all of the most dangerous occupations (e.g. coal mining, soldiering construction, firefighting), such that, in any given year, males represent over ninety percent of workplacefatalities.[34]

Secondly, although men thereby earn more money, on average, than women, these additional earnings are then largely redistributed to women, via such mechanisms as maintenance, alimony, divorce, marriage, courtship and dating.

Thus, if men earn more money, much of these additional earnings are spent on or by their wives, ex-wives and girlfriends (not to mention daughters).

In short, men may earn more money (and earnit they do, in every sense of this word), but women both have more money and spend more money – which is, of course, precisely the reason that they have the luxury of being able to choose not to work in the sort of atrocious working conditions to which men often have no choice but to subject themselves.

___________

What then of the overrepresentation of males in high-profile and high visibility positions of power and influence, such as in government and big business?

Certainly, it is true that men are overrepresented in positions of apparent power, such as prime ministers, presidents and corporate CEOs of major multinational companies.

However, such men represent only a small minority of men and it must also be remembered that, as we have seen, men are also overrepresented among the most disadvantaged groups, such as the homeless, the casualties in warfare, the victims of genocides, the prison population and the victims of violent crime.

Moreover, the small minority of males who do occupy positions of visible authority, power, wealth and privilege in government and business etc. are themselves typically married to women. The latter (i.e. their wives) therefore have access to the same wealth and privilege as their husbands, albeit typically without any of the hard work that it took to achieve this wealth and privilege.

Finally, while a small minority of men, namely those in positions of eminence and power in government and business, may indeed exercise hugely disproportionate influence and power, there is no reason to believe that they exercise this power to benefit men in general.

On the contrary, all the evidence suggests that men are naturally protective of women and far from discriminating against women or otherwise ‘oppressing’ them, are far more apt to discriminate in women’s favour.

There is also evidence of discrimination at other stages of the criminal justice process, such as during the decision whether to arrest a suspect.[39] Yet, once again, most individuals charged with making these decisions (e.g. police officers) are male.

Similarly, although, as the feminists never tire of reminding us, men occupy most of the leading positions in government, and in legislatures, this has not prevented such bodies from enacting laws that systematically and overtly discriminate against men.

In short, far from oppressing women or discriminating against women, men in positions of power, much like other men, are far more prone to discriminate in their favour.

______________________

Endnotes

[1] Conscription refers to compulsory military service. This has been practised in countless societies throughout history, and, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, has been practised at least since 27 BCE, if not earlier. By the time of the First World War, it was all but universal (for males) throughout Europe, and employed by all major combatant nations. Conscription continues to be practised by around eighty regimes around the world, as of 2012 (The Second Sexism: p27). However, it almost always applies exclusively to males, and even those societies which have, in recent years, made a perfunctory pretence of applying conscription to women as well (e.g. Israel), has never been applied on anything like the same terms to women.

[3] For example, according to data cited by David Benatar, “in the United States, fathers gain sole custody of children in about 10% of cases and women in nearly three-quarters” and “in cases of conflicting requests for physical custody, mothers requests for custody were granted twice as often as fathers”, while “in 90% of cases where there was an uncontested request for maternal physical custody of the children the mother was awarded this custody”, whereas this was granted “in only 75% of cases in which there was an uncontested request for paternal physical custody” (The Second Sexism: p50).

[10] The homeless are, by their nature, a difficult group to survey. However, estimates of the gender disparity among the homeless concur in suggesting that males are vastly overrepresented. George Orwell, in his classic study of the poverty and homeless of Paris and London, estimated, on the basis of both official statistics and his own personal experience, that the overrepresentation of men among the destitute occurred at a ratio of roughly ten to one. More recent estimates suggest a similar disparity today, a disparity accentuated among the ‘street homeless’ (see The Myth of Male Power: p209).

[11] In their comprehensive global survey of the correlates of crime, criminologists Anthony Walsh and Lee Ellis report that “except for rape, where essentially all victims are female, males have substantially higher victimization rates than do females” and “even with rapes included in calculating an overall victimization rate, males run a considerably greater risk of being victimized by violent crime than do females” (Criminology: A Global Perspective: p128). Walsh and Ellis are right with respect to violent crime generally. However, they underestimate the prevalence of male rape. Indeed, due to the epidemic levels of rape in the US’s overwhelmingly male prison population, recent government data suggests that in the USA, men may even be overrepresented among rape victims (see my post, Real Rape Culture – The American Prison System). However, violent crime often goes unreported. Meanwhile, rape in particular is probably over-reported, due to exceptionally high rates of false reports. Therefore, the most reliable data is that for homicide, which, as the most extreme form of violent crime, is also the form of violent crime least likely to go either undetected or falsely reported. In the UK in 2010-11, over two thirds (68%) of homicide victims were male, according to government statistics (Osborne, S. (2012) ‘Homicide’ in K. Smith et al (eds), Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2008/09: supplementary volume 2 to Crime in England and Wales 2010/11 Home Office Statistical Bulletin 01/10: at p19). ). Similarly, in the USA, between 1980 and 2008, men were three times as likely to be the victim of homicide as were women (Cooper A & Smith EL (2011) Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008 U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2011, NCJ 236018: at p3). Internationally, according to a comprehensive worldwide epidemiological survey in the mid-1990s, men represented 78% of violent deaths, excluding those resulting from war (see Murray, C.J.L. and Lopez, A.D. 1996. The global burden of disease: A comprehensive assessment of mortality and disability from diseases, injuries and risk factors in 1990 and projected to 2020. Cambridge, Harvard University Press; Murray, C.J.L. and Lopez, A.D. 1996. Global health statistics: a compendium of incidence, prevalence and mortality estimates for over 200 conditions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press: as cited by Joshua Goldstein in War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa: p400).

[12] According to data cited by Joshua Goldstein, adult men represent 58% of fatalities from war across the world – despite the fact that, once children are factored in, men represent a small minority of the population as a whole (War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa: p400; Goldstein bases this on data taken from the two most comprehensive worldwide epidemiological surveys of the causes of death, namely, Murray, C.J.L. and Lopez, A.D. 1996. The global burden of disease: A comprehensive assessment of mortality and disability from diseases, injuries and risk factors in 1990 and projected to 2020. Cambridge, Harvard University Press; and Murray, C.J.L. and Lopez, A.D. 1996. Global health statistics: a compendium of incidence, prevalence and mortality estimates for over 200 conditions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

[13] According to the latest estimates, the US prison population is over 93% male. Of course, this largely reflects the fact that men commit more crimes than women. However, it also reflects the fact that males are sentenced more harshly than females, even after controlling for such factors as prior criminal history and the severity of their offence (see endnote 4above for the many studies replicating this consistent finding). In addition, it reflects bias in the very definition of what constitutes a ‘crime’. Thus, if a man steals another man’s hard earned money or other property, or that of a woman, this is termed ‘theft’. However, if a woman steals a man’s money, this is, as often as not called, not ‘theft’, but rather a ‘divorce settlement’ or a ‘maintenance payment’ – and, far from the courts punishing the wrongdoer, the family courts are actually aiders and abettors in respect of the misappropriation.

[15] Precise figures on the prevalence of drug addiction are difficult to come by, not least because of the difficulty of drawing the line as to when an recreational drug use crosses the line into addiction. Nevertheless, there appears to be agreement that men outnumber women among both substance-abusers and addicts, especially the latter. For example, as part of their encyclopaedic survey of the correlates of criminal behaviour, sociologists Lee Ellis and Anthony Walsh report “a safe conclusion seems to be that, throughout the world, males are more likely to use illegal drugs than are females, unless one includes prescription drugs and/or brief experimentation with ‘light’ experimental drugs such as marijuana” (Criminology: A Global Perspective: p104). Moreover, they report that, “if attention is given to sustained use, especially in adulthood, male use of illegal drugs has always been found to be stronger than female use”, such that in “a US study of deaths due to drug overdosing… three-fourths of victims were male” (Criminology: A Global Perspective: p105).

[17] The sole exception I can think of is the sex selective infanticide widely practised in places such as China. Here, it is female babies who are the victims. Notably, since this is the only form of ‘life-or-death discrimination’ of which women are the victims, this is also the sole form of ‘life or death discrimination’ on which feminists have focussed any attention whatsoever. However, given that most feminists are dogmatically ‘pro-choice’ on the abortion issue, they might be wise not to make too much out of the sex-selective infanticide practised in places like China, since killing a new-born baby is presumably not all that different from killing an ‘unborn child’. Thus, if women have complete freedom to abort their offspring, why should they not also have complete freedom to practise infanticide. Indeed, there is already evidence that, even in the West, surprisingly large numbers of mothers are responsible for killing their own infant offspring, far more than the numbers of men guilty of the same offence, yet the former are treated far more leniently by the courts (see Wilczynski & Morris (1993) ‘Parents Who Kill Their Children’ Criminal Law Review 793: 31-36). Indeed, in the UK, this discrimination has even been made overt, through the Infanticide Acts of 1922 and 1938.

[26] This figure is taken from David Benatar’s The Second Sexism (p27). However, it is very difficult to obtain accurate information on the prevalence of conscription around the world. This is despite the fact that conscription constitutes a form of forced labour and hence arguably of slavery, as well as often involving a high probability of death or serious injury, and thus undoubtedly one of the most extreme forms of human rights abuse. However, human rights groups do not seemingly monitor the practice. As Benatar observes, “it is very difficult to get reliable, comprehensive, up-to-date information on which countries still conscript” (The Second Sexism: p62, note 2). The only previous figure of which I am aware was that given by Bernard T. Rostker, the then Director of the US Selective Service System, in congressional hearings held in 1980, where he reported that that, at that time, 72 countries employed conscription, but only ten registered, let alone conscripted, women (quoted in: Hollander RD (2013) The Draft: Men Only?New Male Studies 2:3 32-41: at p34).

[27] In this age of feminism, a few nations do now make a nominal pretence of applying conscription to women as well as men. To my knowledge, however, none apply the policy to men and women on equal terms. The most famous and widely cited example of the conscription of women occurs in the Israeli armed services. However, as Martin Van Creveld, Israel’s preeminent military historian, reports, whereas male Israelis are now obliged to serve three years, women serve only two or, in practice, “about twenty-two months” (Men, Women and War: p186). Moreover, women “were not expected to take part in combat or even… combat support”, and, partly as a result, “very few women Israeli soldiers have ever been killed in action” (Men, Women and War: p188). In addition, “married women and pregnant women (including such as got pregnant while on active service) were exempt”, as are “women who declared themselves to be religiously observant” (Men, Women and War: p186). By 1999, those claiming exemption on this ground alone had reached “over 26%” (Men, Women and War: p208).

[28] Admittedly, this is, of course, an argument from silence and, as a famous aphorism has it, ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’. Nevertheless, the amount of data that is available is considerable, and the pattern is consistently the same, namely, males being vastly overrepresented among the dead. For example, much is made of civilian casualties during WW2, where widespread bombing of civilian targets occurred. However, according to the entry on ‘Women at War’ by Janet Howarth in The Oxford Companion to World War II, “only countries under German occupation had suffered more civilian than military losses” and “these victims were predominantly men” (The Oxford Companion to World War II: p998).

[29] This is one of the emotive metaphors employed by Warren Farrell in his seminal The Myth of Male Power (reviewed here), where he writes of how “during the [American] Civil War, the government passed a Conscription Act, allowing… for an all-male slave trade”, such that, “in essence, white male slaves fought to free black slaves”. Strictly speaking, most economic definitions of slavery entail two criteria, namely, that the work be both involuntary and unpaid. While conscription, by definition, involves involuntary labour, whether compulsory military service is recompensed, and whether the recompense offered is purely nominal or not, has varied over time and place. Nevertheless, the analogy is sufficiently powerful that the 1930 Forced Labour Convention, prohibiting slavery, explicitly excluded conscription from its prohibition (Article 2 paragraph 2a).

[31] For example, men’s work is more likely to require them to work outdoors in all weather conditions (Mind the Gap: p47; Why Men Earn More: p44-6). More significantly perhaps, men are overrepresented in all of the most physically dangerous occupations, including coal mining, construction work, firefighting and serving in the armed forces, especially in a combat capacity. Indeed, many of these occupations could be said to be almost entirely male.

[41] While sometimes described as legislation intended to prevent the exploitation of child labour, the Mines and Collieries Act 1842 actually sanctioned the employment of boys as young as ten underground in mines, while prohibiting the employment of women of any age in the same capacity.

[42] The Military Service Act of 1916 of 1916 sanctioned the compulsory enlistment (i.e. conscription) of men from the ages of eighteen to forty-one years old to serve in the armed forces during World War One. It applied, of course, only to men. Interestingly, however, married men were initially exempt (hence it was nicknamed the ‘the Bachelor’s Bill’. Clearly depriving men of their liberty and very probably their lives was perfectly acceptable to the male Parliament and its male electorate. However, depriving women of their husbands and hence their meal-ticketswas another thing altogether.

“Marx said about the industrial system that people are profoundly alienated from the ‘means of production’ – jobs. Political and social radicalism was one response to that. If Darwin were alive today he might comment that men are profoundly alienated from the ‘means of reproduction’ – women”

To most people who identify with the contemporary left, the parallel between class exploitation and the exploitation that allegedly underlies the relations between men and women is obvious. Just as the proletariat are exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, so women are exploited and oppressed by males.

Indeed, the entire structure of feminist theory (or what passes for theory among feminists) is rooted, consciously or not, in Marxist social theory. Thus, just as Marxist sociologists view all the institutions of society (the family, education system, mass media etc.) as controlled by and functioning so as to perpetuate the dominance of the bourgeoisie, so feminist theory views these same institutions as controlled by and functioning to perpetuate the dominance of men.

Indeed, this is a feature shared with other radical leftist ideologies rooted in identity politics. Each posits the existence of a grand conspiracy against an ostensibly ‘oppressed’ group. The only difference is who is a party to, and beneficiary of, the said conspiracy, and who the victims.

For Marxists, the evil conspirators are the capitalists; for black nationalists, they are ‘The White Man’; for anti-Semites, ‘the Jews’ are to blame; whereas, for feminists it is men. Each theory appeals to simple minds looking for simple answers, and, more importantly, someone to blame.

Of course, these days, some ‘moderate’ feminists, and conservatives who identify as feminist, may try to downplay the extent of the debt feminism owes to Marxism. Nevertheless, among feminists and Marxists alike, not to mention among feminist-Marxists, Marxist-feminists, sociologists, Women’s Studies professors and other such professional damned fools who together make up the state-funded intellectual vanguard of the contemporary left-liberal establishment, it is axiomatic that feminism and Marxism are, not only compatible and complementary, but moreover ideological comrades-in-arms united together in fighting for an end to all forms of inequality and injustice.

In fact, however, my own view is that feminism is neither left-wing nor liberal. In a forthcoming post (provisionally entitled ‘Feminist Fascism: From Burning Bras to Burning Books – or Why Feminism is Neither Left-Wing Nor Liberal but Rather Right-Wing and Reactionary’), I shall expand upon this theory. However, for now it suffices to say that, in seeking to entrench and expand the privileges of an already immensely privileged group (i.e. Western women), it is obviously right-wing; whereas, in campaigning to restrict pornography, prostitution and other such fun and healthy recreational activities, not to mention free speech, it is anything but liberal.

In this post, however, my focus is rather narrower. I intend to demonstrate that, despite their superficial commonalities, Marxist and feminist theory are fundamentally incompatible and that the central feminist claim, namely that women represent an oppressed and disadvantaged class, is contrary, not only by the manifest reality the privileged position of women in contemporary Western society, but also, by basic Marxist economic theory.

On this view, feminism is better viewed, from a Marxist standpoint, as a form of dominant ideology designed to benefit the capitalist class, both by expanding the availability of cheap labour (i.e. working women) and distracting attention from the real oppression of the truly disadvantaged, who are, in truth, mostly men.

Engels’ Error

Where then did Marxists, feminists, Marxist-feminists and feminist-Marxists take a wrong turn in attempting to apply Marxist theory to the family and the relations between the sexes. The problem, it seems, began early, not with feminists, nor with Marx himself, but with his comrade, collaborator and (capitalist) financial backer, Fredrich Engels.

This is a passage much quoted by early feminists and their modern intellectual descendants. Indeed, along with Mill’s ‘The Subjugation of Women’, it arguably provides the intellectual foundation for modern feminism.[5]

However, Engels’ analysis in this paragraph is also obviously, not only wrong, but also fundamentally inconsistent with the very Marxist analysis that Engels purported to apply and of which he was himself the co-formulator.

In contrast, the bourgeoisie (i.e. capitalists) are defined by their ownership of the ‘Means of Production’ (i.e. of land, factories and everything needed to produce goods for sale, except labour). This means that, unlike the proletariat, they do not have to sell their labour, and are able instead to subsist, and indeed to prosper, by employing the labour of proletarians and extracting ‘surplus value’ (i.e. profits).

In short, the proletariat are obliged to sell their labour to make a living; the bourgeoisie/capitalists are not, being able instead to exploit the labour of the former.

Indeed, even non-Marxists agree that, always, throughout history, it was those groups within society who were obliged to work so as to survive – slaves, serfs, so-called ‘wage-slaves’ and the aptly named ‘working classes’ – who were regarded as ‘oppressed’, disadvantaged and exploited as a consequence of this fact.

In contrast, those exempt from having to work – the so-called ‘leisure class’ or ‘idle rich’ – who were supported by the labour of others were regarded as their exploiters.

Yet feminists following in the footsteps of Engels equated the housewife’s ostensible ‘oppression’ precisely with the fact that she did not have to work to earn her keep but rather was supported by her husband, and her ‘liberation’ with her entrance into the world of wage-slavery.

It is almost as if the slaveholder were perversely to pose as ‘oppressed’ on account of being denied the opportunity to toil for endless hours in his cotton fields, and was to claim ‘liberation’ by virtue of being chained up alongside his slaves.

Thus, contrary to Engels, the fact that the husband is, in Engels’ own words, “obliged to earn a living and support his family” does not make him bourgeois. On the contrary, it makes him the quintessential proletarian.

In contrast, it is the housewife, who is supported at the expense of her husband, who occupies a position analogous to the bourgeois. Both are spared work and instead supported at the expense of male labourers.

Engels, perhaps suffering from an infection of misguided male chivalry, does not just have it wrong; he has it precisely backwards – and the feminists fell for it.

Let’s first deal with the orthodox Marxism. The bourgeoisie manage to live off the labour of the working-class, according to orthodox Marxist economic theory, because they control what Marxists refer to as ‘the Means of Production’. This refers to the means necessary to produce goods and services for sale in the marketplace, and includes such items as land, factories, capital and, of course, labour.

How then do women manage to achieve a feat analogous to that or the capitalists when most women do not own any of the ‘means of production’?[7]

I submit the explanation lies, not in women’s control over the ‘means of production’, but rather in their ownership of the ‘Means of Reproduction’ – namely their own vaginas, wombs, ovaries etc.

The essence of this idea was first captured by American socialists, Roscoe B Tobias and Mary Marcy, the latter a vaguely famous early twentieth century (female) American socialist, the former her brother, in their remarkable but largely forgotten work, Women as Sex Vendors[8](which I have reviewed here).

There, Tobais and Marcy write:

“As a sex, women occupy a position similar to the petty shop-keeper, because they possess a commodity to sell or to barter. Men, as a sex, are buyers of, or barterers for, this commodity”.[9]

In short, as they put it in the blurb to the original 1918 edition, “women occupy a position similar to the petty shop-keeper, because they possess a commodity to sell or to barter besides their own labour power”.

Thus, according to another early-twentieth-century socialist and anti-feminist, Ernest Belfort Bax, Tobias and Marcy’s thesis can be summarized thus:

In other words, whereas the male proletarian famously has ‘nothing to sell but his labour’, the same is not true of any woman, irrespective of her socioeconomic class. She has something else to sell – namely her body.

“By the age of twelve at the latest, most women have decided to become prostitutes. Or, to put it another way, they have planned a future for themselves which consists of choosing a man and letting him do all the work. In return for his support, they are prepared to let him make use of their vagina at certain given moments.”[11]

From Marxism to Sociobiology

Of course, this in turn begs the question as to why it can be said that women own the ‘means of reproduction’? After all, both a man and a woman, a sperm and an ovum, are required to produce human offspring. Thus, despite women’s proudly proclaimed status as ‘the bearers of life’, both a woman and a man are necessary to create human life.

To successfully reproduce, a woman in the EEA must, at the very minimum, invest not only an ovum, but nine month’s gestation, plus some time nursing. In contrast, reproduction may cost a human male nothing more than the costs involved in producing a single ejaculate, plus the energy expended in intercourse.

As a result, a man can increase his number of offspring (i.e. his Darwinian fitness) by mating with multiple females and the more females with whom he mates, then, all else being equal, the more offspring he is likely to have.

In contrast, given the demands of pregnancy, a human female can only produce one offspring every year or so at most (with the exception of twins), however many men she has sex with. With the addition of the demands of nursing (i.e. in the absence of either surrogate wet nursing or bottle-feeding, both of which would have been absent in what evolutionary psychologists call the ‘EEA’), this is reduced to one child every few years or more, given the suppression of fertility by lactation.

It therefore pays females to be more selective over their choice of sexual partners than are males. Thus, in one delightful illustration of this principle, psychologists Clark and Hatfield found that, whereas 72% of male subjects agreed to go to bed with an attractive female stranger who approached them with a request to this effect on a university campus, not a single one of the 96 females approached agreed to the same request from a similarly attractive male experimenter.[14](What percentage of the women sued the university for sexual harassment was never revealed.)

One strategy adopted by females in various species, humans included, is to demand material resources from males in return for sexual access.

Thus, leading evolutionary psychologist David Buss has written “The evolution of the female preference for males who offer resources may be the most ancient and pervasive basis for female choice in the animal kingdom”.[15]

John Alcock, in his textbook on Animal behaviour, reports:

“A classic demonstration of this strategy comes from Randy Thornhill’s study of the black-tipped hangingfly, whose females make copulation, and subsequent egg fertilisations, contingent upon receipt of an edible nuptial gift. Females flatly refuse to mate with males that proffer unpalatable ladybird beetles and will let copulation begin only when the present is edible. If, however, the female can consume the gift in less than 5 minutes, she finishes it and separates from her partner without having accepted a single sperm. When the gift is large enough to keep the copulating female occupied for 20 minutes, she will depart with a full gut and a full complement of the gift-givers sperm.”[16]

Patterns of prostitution also confirm that, in respect of sexual favours, women are the sellers, men the buyers.

Indeed, to the extent male prostitutes do exist, they overwhelmingly service, not women, but rather homosexual men. As pioneering sociologist-turned-sociobiologist Pierre Van Den Berghe observes, “The male prostitute, unless he caters to homosexuals, is an economic redundancy, constantly undercut by eager amateur competition”.[17]

Indeed, this pattern is not merely restricted to overt prostitution but extends, in one way or another, to all forms of heterosexual coupling and courtship.

Women as Nature’s Capitalist Class

Women, like the scions of great capitalists, are therefore blessed by birth with ownership over a commodity, other than their own labour, they will be able to sell in the marketplace – namely sexual access to their various orifices.

This is a commodity the value of which is easy to underestimate.

Thus, as we have seen, Tobias and Marcy equate women with what Marx derisively termed the ‘petit bourgeoisie’, writing, “women occupy a position similar to the petty shop-keeper, because they possess a commodity to sell or to barter besides their own labour power”.

However, in equating women exclusively with “the petty shop-keeper”, Tobias and Marcy potentially vastly underestimate the potential price of pussy.

Some women may indeed sell their sex cheaply – e.g. the street prostitute or wife of a humble manual labourer. However, other women manage to command a price that is, by any measure, positively exorbitant – e.g. the indolent parasitic wife of a multimillionaire tycoon or of royalty.

The wife of the millionaire tycoon is therefore the apex predator, occupying an even higher position in the economic food chain than her husband. Women have long been known by researchers in the marketing industry to dominate almost every area of consumer spending.

After all, given that humans have evolved through natural selection ultimately to maximise their inclusive fitness or reproductive success, women’s advantage is, in sociobiological terms, more fundamental than that of the capitalists. The capitalists may control the ‘Means of Production’, but women control the ‘Means of Reproduction’.

“The ultimate measure of human success is not production but reproduction. Economic productivity and profit are means to reproductive ends, not ends in themselves.”[18]

Production is ultimately, in Darwinian terms, merely a means of reproduction. Reproduction is the ultimate purpose of life.

Thus, for all his ostensible radicalism, it seems that Karl Marx, in his emphasis on economics (‘production’) at the expense of sex (‘reproduction’), was just another Victorian sexual prude.

Thus, if, as Marxists maintain, wealthy capitalists control the capitalist economy, then the women who are wives of wealthy capitalists also indirectly control the capitalist economy through both their purchasing power and their control over the wealth generated by their husbands’ entrepreneurialism.

As Leo Tolstoy observed, then as now, one has only to walk through the streets of any shopping mall, especially the among more expensive shops selling jewellery or overpriced designer clothes to see who spends most of the money, and to whom most of the products are marketed

From Economic Power to Social and Political Power

However, Marxist analyses of capitalist society do not stop at the economic analysis that lies at their foundation. On the contrary, it extends to sociological and political analysis.

Marxist Theory is often described as a form of ‘economic determinism’. Marxists maintain that the ideology and institutions prevailing in a given society reflect the economic relations between members of that society. Thus, economics ultimately determines culture – or, in Marxist terminology, the ‘economic base’ determines the ‘Superstructure’.

In other words, economically powerful groups within society convert their economic power into social and political power by controlling the culture and institutions of society in order to promote their own interests and continued dominance over the rest of society.

On this view, all the central institutions of Western capitalist society – e.g. the mass media, criminal justice system, courts and education system – function, ultimately, to maintain and perpetuate the dominance of the capitalist class.

Thus, the legal system functions to protect property rights, the educational system to reproduce the class system in the next generation and to inculcate capitalist values in young minds, while the media exists to propagate the dominant ideology of the ruling class among the malleable masses.

Extending their Marxian-masculist analysis from purely economic relations to the social and political institutions of society, Tobais and Marcy write:

“The laws today protect the owners of property and the economically powerful. The more economic power a group, or a class, or a sex possesses, the more the state throws the mantle of its protective laws about it. Women are the owners of a commodity for which men are buyers or barterers, and our modern laws protect woman at the expense of man.”[25]

This then explains the discrimination against men that operates in many areas of law, not just in Tobais and Marcy’s day, but also in the legal systems of modern, ostensibly egalitarian, Western legal systems.

Feminism as a ‘Dominant Ideology’

However, according to the ‘economic determinism’ of orthodox Marxism, the economic relations between classes (the ‘economic base’ of society) determines not only the laws operating, but also the prevailing cultural, social, political and philosophical values and beliefs prevalent in the society in question.

This is sometimes referred to as the ‘dominant ideology’ of the society, and is thought to reflect the interests of the dominant economic class in that society.

Thus, the values and beliefs widely held in Western capitalist society, and promoted in the mass media, education system etc., are, on this view, thought to be those that benefit the dominant capitalist class in Western society (‘sex vendors’ included).

This same analysis can then surely be employed to explain feminism itself.

After all, what represents the dominant viewpoint or ideology concerning gender roles and the relations between the sexes in contemporary Western society? The answer, of course, is feminism.

Why then does the capitalist media and the political and academic establishment promote feminist ideology so relentlessly? How does feminism benefit the dominant capitalist class in Western society?

The answer, for anyone familiar with basic Marxist economic theory, should be obvious. Indeed, it is literally staring us in the face, to such an extent that it is a wonder that so few self-styled Marxist intellectuals (Bax, Marcy and Tobias excepted) have failed to recognise it and have instead fell hook line and sinker for the bourgeois propaganda.

An increase in the supply of labour, creates greater competition for jobs, which, in turn, drives down wages, an obvious benefit to capitalist employers.

Moreover, since married women usually remain financially supported, at least in part, by their husbands, this means they can afford to work for less than can single men, let alone married men and fathers (who are still expected to support a wife and children in addition to themselves). This means that women undercut the wages which male employees are otherwise able to command, further benefiting capitalist employers.

This has led anti-capitalist anti-feminist iconoclast Rich Zubaty to controversially describe feminism as “the biggest scab labor movement in history”.

Thus, as anti-feminist Neil Lyndon observes:

“The changes which were taken to be victories of emancipatory spirit among women were all conductive to the development of capitalism… [and] the long march of the left towards the identification of the class which would be the dissolution of all classes had simply resulted in the creation of a larger class of wage slaves required by national and international markets.”[34]

At any rate, whether or not one accepts the rigid ‘economic determinism’ of orthodox Marxism, it is clear that feminism led the way in helping to effect, or, at the very least, providing a key retrospective justification for, the shift in patterns of employment among married women that was undoubtedly beneficial to capitalist employers.

An accompanying side-effect of this shift was, of course, mass male unemployment and the widespread breakdown of the family unit, with men losing their traditional role role as breadwinners, and the traditional ‘nuclear family’ replaced by what Warren Farrell calls “a new nuclear family: woman, government and child”, with single mothers increasingly subsidised by taxpayers’ money via the welfare system, and fathers increasingly superfluous to requirements.

However, to the capitalists, this was of little concern. The key point was that, civil disorder and psychological distress notwithstanding, capitalist production and consumption continued unabated.

Meanwhile, in addition to these purely economic benefits, feminism offered a further political and ideological benefit for ruling elites – namely, it distracted attention away from the very real oppression of genuinely disadvantaged groups – e.g. refuse disposal workers, coal miners and the homeless (all of whom happen, of course, to be overwhelmingly male).

It therefore permitted successive waves of resolutely capitalist governments of all political colours to disingenuously pose as radical by pandering to the whims of over-privileged middle-class feminists in lieu of doing anything to tackle genuine inequality, oppression and poverty.

On this view, feminism served both economic and political purposes for the capitalist ruling class, and was an overwhelmingly successful strategy in both respects.

Yet, far from being the radical left-wing revolutionaries of their own imaginings, feminists were, on this view, little more than naïve and unwitting tools of, ‘useful idiots’ for, and abettors to, the very capitalist exploitation they, and their leftist allies, purport to oppose.

[7] Of course, some women may own these things, usually indirectly though their husband’s ownership of them, and their own effective ownership of their husbands under current marriage laws. Moreover, women, as we have seen, in a sense control the labour of their husbands, in that they benefit from and are supported by it, and labour is itself one of the essential ‘means of production’. However, these are precisely the facts that we are trying here to explain.

[24] Tolstoy L (1900) ‘Need it be So?’; Similarly, in a contemporary context, Warren Farrell makes much the same observation, concluding, “in my own examination of large shopping malls… I found that seven times as much floor space is devoted to women’s personal items as to men’s” and that “the more valuable floor space… was devoted to women’s items” (Myth of Male Power: p33; p374).

[29] For example, in The Second Sexism, David Benatar reports “in the United States, fathers gain sole custody of children in about 10% of cases and women in nearly three-quarters” and “in cases of conflicting requests for physical custody, mothers requests for custody were granted twice as often as fathers”, while “in 90% of cases where there was an uncontested request for maternal physical custody of the children the mother was awarded this custody”, whereas this was granted “in only 75% of cases in which there was an uncontested request for paternal physical custody” (p50). Although the Supreme Court declared in 1979 that discrimination against men in custody disputes was unconstitutional, the courts and legislatures easily evaded this proscription by favouring instead the so-called ‘primary caregiver’ (The Privileged Sex: p177), a clear case of indirect discrimination, given that ‘primary caregiver’ is defined in such a way as to be overwhelmingly female.

[33] Whereas Warren Farrell in The Myth of Male Power (reviewed here) purports to identify twelve “‘female-only’ defences” in US criminal law, I am thinking here particularly of the Infanticide Acts of 1922 and 1938 in the UK, which give explicit statutory recognition to one of these.

The New Orthodoxy

In the last half century, feminist thought has become the received wisdom. Whereas the original feminists saw themselves as radicals and freethinkers, today their views have reached a level of such universal assent that feminism can be regarded as a new orthodoxy and contemporary dogma.[1]

Whereas social theorists, public intellectuals and assorted professional damned fools routinely subject other ideologies, philosophies and political movements to sustained analytical critique, male thinkers generally let feminists off with little more than a patronising and approving pat on the head – thus ironically demonstrating precisely the kind of patronising chivalry that feminists, when they are not benefiting from it, usually purport to oppose!

Neither has there been any significant popular opposition by ordinary men (marches, demonstrations etc.). Instead, as Esther Vilar observed in ‘The Manipulated Man’ [which I have reviewed here]:

“From The New York Times to the Christian Science Monitor, from Playboy to Newsweek, from Kissinger to McGovern, everyone was for Women’s Liberation. No marches of men were organized against them; a senator McCarthy oppressing Women’s Liberation was missing, the FBI did not lift a finger against them.”[2]

The battle of the sexes thus became, as Ronald K Henry characterised it, “a war in which only one side showed up”.[3]

Incidentally, this lack of any significant opposition to feminism is, of itself, evidence against the central feminist claim – namely that there exists a conspiracy of men united together to oppress women (i.e. the fabled patriarchy). For if, as feminists contend, such a conspiracy does exist, then surely more men would use their alleged patriarchal power to defend their purported patriarchal privileges by opposing feminism. Yet the backlash widely anticipated by feminists regrettably never seems to materialize.

Chivalry and the Rise of Feminism

How then did this transformation occur? How did feminism go from an iconoclastic cult on the outer-fringes of left-wing radicalism[5] to the modern orthodoxy regarding the nature of gender relations? And why, in the process, did it inspire so little opposition, especially among those whom it sought to cast in the role of oppressor (i.e. men).

One intriguing explanation for the rise of feminism draws, rather ironically, on Marxist theory. This suggests that, for all its ostensible radicalism, feminism actually promoted the interests of the dominant political and economic elite. On this view, not only did feminism draw attention away from other radical movements that posed more authentic threats to the status quo[6], it also encouraged more married women to enter the labour market, which benefited capitalist employers, by increasing the supply of labour and driving down wages.[7]

“The changes which were taken to be victories of emancipatory spirit among women were all conductive to the development of capitalism… [and] the long march of the left towards the identification of the class which would be the dissolution of all classes had simply resulted in the creation of a larger class of wage slaves required by national and international markets.”[8]

On this view, it is significant that the rise of feminism coincided with an economic shift in western economies. Whereas during the early part of the twentieth century western economies were dominated by manufacturing and heavy industry, the latter half of the century witnessed a shift to a post-industrialservice economy, with the service sector, for which women workers are arguably better suited, increasingly predominating.

On this view, the leftist infatuation for feminism notwithstanding, feminists were little more than useful idiots and pawns of their capitalist oppressors.

In turning leftist theory against itself, this explanation is certainly amusing. Moreover, the fact that it is certain to infuriate countless feminists, Marxists, ‘Marxist feminists’, ‘feminist Marxists’ and other assorted professional damned fools is surely a further factor in its favour.

Personally, however, I have little appetite for Marxist conspiracy theories. Moreover, I contend that we have no need to resort them in explaining either the lack of opposition to feminism or its consequential rise to the status of a largely unquestioned dogma.

A far simpler explanation is readily available – namely malechivalry.

Boys learn from an early age that fighting with girls is a no-win situation. If they win, they are bullies who beat up girls; if they lose, they are wimps who are beaten up by girls. Moreover, they are punished much more severely than for equivalent altercations with boys.[10]

Then, with the arrival of puberty, they discover a further reason not to antagonise their female peers – namely, that it might hinder their chances of persuading the latter to have sex with them. Thus, by the time they reach adulthood, men have long ago learnt to avoid conflict with women by deferring to them if at all possible.

The failure of men challenge or oppose feminism can therefore be seen as a reflection of the general male tendency to avoid conflict with women where at all possible. The vast majority of feminists were, after all, women. Opposition to feminism on the part of men thus came to be viewed as the rough moral equivalent of wife beating!

This explains the apparent paradox whereby a substantial proportion of those few individuals who have dared to oppose aspects of the feminist orthodoxy have been, not men, but rather womenthemselves. Women are, after all, at last partially exempt from the strict cultural taboo that prohibits men from behaving aggressively towards women. Thus, female writers and activists such as Esther Vilar, Christina Hoff Sommers, Camille Paglia, Phillis Schlafly, Catherine Hakim, Erin Pizzey, Cathy Young and Wendy McElroy are able to challenge aspects of the feminist orthodoxy without attracting quite the same level of opprobrium, outrage and censure that would attach to men who embarked on a similar project.

Chivalry also explains why many men, far from merely failing to oppose feminism, actually actively supported the feminist movement. After all, chivalry goes far further than merely prohibiting men from behaving aggressively towards women – it also demands that they be positively protective towards women.

Moreover, the male tendency to behave protectively towards women is never more strongly provoked than when the women in question are perceived as being victimised by males. This is why both sexes perceive domestic abuse as more serious when it involves men abusing women than when it involves women abusing men[21] and why, of all offender-victim dyads, it is men who commit violent offences against women are sentenced most severely of all[22].

Men’s especial propensity to behave protectively towards women when the latter are perceived as being victimised by men therefore explains the peculiar attraction of feminism to many men. Feminism, after all, cast women in the role of victims, downtrodden, oppressed and exploited by male oppressors.

Male feminists were, of course, all too eager to play the starring role.

Male feminism is thus a form of what has become known in the internet age as ‘white knighting‘.

Yet the sordid reality, namely, that they represented, not so much heroic knights errant as cowardly collaborators in their own oppression – the modern male equivalent of Uncle Tomsand self-hating Jews – was as far removed from their own heroic self-image as chivalric romances were from the brutal reality of medieval warfare.

Moreover, underlying this male chivalry is, of course, a decidedly sexist assumption – namely that feminists themselves (i.e. the female ones), being of ‘theweaker sex’, are therefore incapable of defending themselves and hence require male protection and support – and never more so than when confronted with the mean-spirited verbal assaults of the analytically-superior male minds of Men’s Rights Activists such as Glenn Sacks, Warren Farrell, and Angry Harry.

A case in point is provided by the treatment of Warren Farrell, the formidable father of the modern Men’s Rights Movement. Although Farrell reports that leading feminists, including Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Susan Faludi and Catherine MacKinnon, have refused to debate him[28], one of the few feminists who has deigned to do so is, ironically, a man – namely the feminist-friendly philosopher James Sterba. This so-called ‘debate’ took the form of a book (Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? A Debate: which I have reviewed here) co-authored by himself and Farrell[29].

Therefore, far from ‘oppressing’ women and discriminating against women, men are much more inclined to discriminate in their favour, by both inhibiting aggression and, moreover, acting protectively and chivalrously towards them. The central assumption of feminism – namely that men oppress and discriminate against women – could not be more wrong.

Of course, Chivalric codes dictate that men must behave chivalrously towards all women, irrespective of their sexual attractiveness or physical repulsiveness. After all, men are expected to hold open doors for wrinkled old ladies just as much as for nubile pert-breasted eighteen-year-olds – perhaps more so.

After all, even the knight in shining armour presumably expects – and surely deserves – some reward for his gallant if misguided heroism. However, whether he actually receives his due reward is, of course, entirely at the discretion of the damsel in distress in respect of whom he has been foolish enough to perform his service. Such are the one-sided privileges women insist upon.

However, besides misguided male chivalry, another more obvious reason for the lack of opposition to feminism should not be discounted – namely, the lengths to which feminists have gone to silence it.

After all, at about the same age boys learn not to fight with girls, they also learn that the latter do not fight fair. Lying outside the jurisdiction of the code duello[30]governing duels of honour between men, they compensate for their physical weakness by a greater willingness to kick below the belt, both literally and metaphorically – and they exercise this prerogative as readily in the intellectual sphere as readily as in any other.

In other words, the feminist orthodoxy, like the religious orthodoxies of earlier ages, has readily resorted to the persecution of heretics.

“[These days] all one has to lose by unpopular arguments is contact with people one would not be terribly attracted to anyway”.[31]

However, Goldberg underestimates, not only the psychological trauma of ostracism, but also the methods of persecution to which feminists have been willing and able to resort. Ad hominems, whispering campaigns, and book burnings are all within their armoury as weapons of first resort and, when this fails, physical threats and attacks are not unknown.

Thus, while media pundits, commentators, documentary filmmakers, social theorists, public intellectuals and other assorted professional damned fools loudly decry without fear of reprisals a form of McCarthyism (namely, anti-communism) that ran out of steam over half a century ago, they turn a convenient blind eye to this “Modern McCarthyism in our Midst” for the simple reason that to draw attention to it is in itself to risk incurring its wrath[41].

Apologetics and Appeasement

Another indicator of the power of the feminist lobby to persecute its perceived political opponents is the great pains taken by those who perceive themselves as at risk of such victimisation to evade it. The tried and tested methods seem to be apologetics and appeasement.

For example, popular science writer Steven Pinker is perhaps the best known contemporary champion of the view that sex differences in behaviour and psychology have an innate evolved biological basis. However, aware that this view runs contrary to the prevailing feminist orthodoxy, he takes pains to protect himself from feminist ire by repeatedly insisting, in each successive book that deals with the issue, that this view is in no way incompatible with feminism.

Thus, in How the Mind Works (1998), he insists that “what evolutionary psychology challenges is not the goals of feminism, but parts of the modern orthodoxy about the mind that have been taken up by the intellectual establishment of feminism”[42], ideas which “feminism would lose nothing by giving up”[43]; while in The Blank Slate, he emphasises that “to attack a particular feminist proposal is not to attack feminism in general”, claims that his views “don’t in the least” “go against feminism in general”[44], and even declares “the ongoing liberation of women after millennia of oppression is one of the great moral achievements of our species”[45].

Indeed, a curious yet recurrent feature of works ostensibly attacking feminism – or, at least, those works that are themselves attacked by feminists for having allegedly attacked feminism – is that the works themselves almost invariably disclaim any pretensions to doing any such thing[46]. On the contrary, the authors often do their best, often with faintly embarrassing unctuousness, to loudly and proudly proclaim their own feminist credentials.

Even Men’s Rights Activists are not above appeasing feminist sensibilities with hollow disclaimers. On the contrary, they – or at least those few among their number who have been granted even a modicum of access to the mainstream media – frequently pay obedient hen-pecked homage to the same inviolable taboo.

When even the best known ostensible opponents of feminism loudly and proudly protest their emphatic support for feminism and feminist ideals, this is surely a measure of the pervasive influence of feminism on contemporary thought.

Yet if the intention behind issuing these disclaimers is to appease the feminist lobby, then it must be concluded they are singularly ineffective.

Such disclaimers do, however, have a more sinister effect. In declaring their commitment to feminism these writers inadvertently pay homage to, and thereby reinforce, the inviolable and sacrosanct nature of core feminist dogma.

Conservative Chivalry

Even what little opposition to feminism does exist, or at least that which succeeds in penetrating the mainstream media and publishing industry to any degree whatsoever, is decidedly neutered in form. I have already mentioned the irony that many of the most prominent critics of the feminist orthodoxy are themselves female. Of itself, this should not be held against them. However, a concomitant characteristic of such criticism is that, not only is opposition to feminism more often voicedby women, it is also, like the feminism it purports to critique, primarily concerned with women and with their interests.

Thus, if those writers castigated by feminists as ‘anti-feminists’ usually defend themselves against this charge by claiming to be, in fact, ‘feminists’ themselves, then those few commentators who do dare to openly declare themselves ‘anti-feminists’ often turn out, on closer inspection, to share so many values and assumptions with their ostensible feminist opponents that it would almost be accurate to them as ‘feminists’ themselves in all but name.

Thus, even these ostensible critics of feminism share with their feminist adversaries the core feminist assumption that policies should be judged, not according to whether they are good or bad for humankind as a whole, but rather primarily according to the criterion of whether they advance the interests of women and of women alone. The interests of men are either ignored or, at best, relegated to secondary importance.

An example is provided by the debate regarding pornography. On the one hand, the opponents of pornography (dominated by an unholy alliance of radical feminists and religious fundamentalists) typically focus on the supposed harmful effects on women, claiming that pornography both exploits the women involved in its production (even though they are paid very well – and much more than the more talented male performers whom they work alongside) and harms women more generally by influencing male attitudes towards women (although the evidence suggests otherwise[59]).

On the other hand, defenders of pornography also do so in the name of feminism and ‘women’s rights’[60] – namely the ostensible ‘right’ of women to produce, profit from and occasionally consume pornography. Meanwhile, any ‘rights’ men might be presumptuous enough to lay claim to – say, the right to consume and enjoy pornography and the sexual pleasure with which it provides them – go completely unacknowledged.

Thus, the implicit underlying assumption of both feminists and the conservatives who purport to critique them – namely that the rights and interests of women trump those men – stands unchallenged. As Warren Farrell observed in The Myth of Male Power (which I have reviewed here), male chauvinism and feminism have one thing in common – both are concerned with protecting women[61].

Discrimination and Disadvantage

Even those authors who do draw attention to discrimination against men typically emphasise its secondary importance as compared to discrimination against women. For example, discrimination against men is often referred to as ‘reverse discrimination’ – a phrase that suggests this is the reverse of the usual direction of discrimination.

Worse still, discrimination against men is sometimes referred to as ‘positive discrimination’ or ‘affirmative action’, implying that, unlike discrimination of which women are the victims, there is something ‘positive’ or even desirable about discriminating against men.

Philosopher’s David Benetar’s phrase, ‘The Second Sexism’, which he adopts as the title of his recent book on anti-male discrimination, is little better. By referring to discrimination against men as the second sexism, he implicitly concedes that the primary sexism is that against women, and that discrimination against men is only of secondary importance.

Yet, as I shall show in my forthcoming posts, “Why I am not a Feminist” [now available here] and “Why Feminism is False” (both due to be posted shortly), each of these assumptions is entirely false. In reality, discrimination against men is far more substantial and serious than that against women. Moreover, it is by no means a recent phenomenon. Instead, it is likely that men have always been the primary victims of discrimination, both today and throughout history.

Even the few heterodox writers courageous enough to buck this trend by suggesting that women may in fact be, not oppressed by men, but rather, on average, better off than men, or even privileged, have usually ducked from the full implications of this insight.

For example, military historian Martin Van Creveld suggests that, far from being oppressed, “women are in fact the privileged sex”[62], a phrase which he provocatively adopts as the title of the excellent work in which this claim is made. However, on the very next page, Van Creveld qualifies his assertion by insisting “this phrase is not to deny that nature, by giving women weaker physiques and lactation, has in some ways made their lot harder than that of men… [nor] that their lives are a rose garden”[63] and then, hedging his bets, instead insists that his claim is only that “for every disadvantage under which women labor, they enjoy a privilege that is equally important to their lives if not more so”[64]. Thus, far from asserting that women are ‘The Privileged Sex’, he is reduced to asserting only that men are no more privileged than are women.

Similarly, Steve Moxon observes that, whereas the majority of men “make up the biggest disadvantaged sub-group in every society… women by contrast are universally and perennially privileged: over-privileged”[65]. However, in the very next paragraph, he insists, “you won’t find me adding men to the ever expanding list of ‘victims’”, and instead proposes “tearing up the entire list and throwing it away”[66].

Likewise, Kingsley Browne, in his excellent Biology at Work: Rethinking Sexual Equality [which I have reviewed here], having demonstrated that the gender pay-gap is a function of, not discrimination, but rather the greater sacrifices men endure in return for higher pay, and how women have greater choices available to them compared to men, insists nevertheless “this is not to suggest that the mantle of victimhood should be lifted from women and conferred on men”, but rather “what needs to be questioned is the notion that either sex is a victim”[67].

‘New Media’ and the Fall of the Feminist Dogma

From the preceding discussion, it may well be assumed that intellectual and political hegemony of what I have referred to as ‘the Feminist Dogma’ is, at least in the West, largely unchallenged. To be sure, a few heretics have dared to challenge some aspects of feminist orthodoxy. However, as we have seen, they have been subjected to relentless campaigns of censure, persecution and intimidation, and, as a form of self-defence have almost invariably insisted that their problem is not with feminism itself, but only with particular feminist theories or ideological excesses.

Moreover, even those writers who have purported to reject feminism in its totality (e.g.Phillis Schlafly) have invariably done so, not in the name of men, but rather in the name of women themselves. They have therefore shared so many underlying assumptions with the feminists whom they purport to critique – in particular the assumption that women’s rights and interests always trump those of men – that it would almost be accurate to characterise them as feminists, or at least crypto-feminists, themselves.

As recently as the 1990s, this picture would not represent an inaccurate depiction of the then-current state of play regarding views on gender relations in the West. However, this can now no longer be said to be the case.

As readers will already no doubt be aware, in the last fifteen or so years the rise of the internet has broken the monolithic mainstream media monopoly on political commentary and the dissemination of information. In addition to breaking this monopoly, such individuals have also shattered the politically-correct consensus, formerly enforced by editors, publishers and other guardians of what is regarded as the limits of acceptable debate.

Indeed, it is precisely those internet commentators whose views diverge from those already represented in the mainstream media who have been among the most successful. Whereas those bloggers whose views merely echo the politically-correct orthodoxy, in doing so, offer little if anything that is not already available in the mainstream media, politically-incorrect commentators are providing a viewpoint unavailable elsewhere. They therefore tap into an unexploited gap in the media market that mainstream publishers and publications, their hands tied by the censorious demands of political correctness, are unable, or at least unwilling, to occupy.

Whereas the vast majority of self-appointed internet commentators inevitably languish in obscurity, many of these heterodox thinkers have successfully penetrated the media marketplace, carving a unique niche for themselves in the marketplace of ideas. Slowly but surely, political correctness, the “Modern Mccarthyism in our Midst”, is being rendered unenforceable.

Inevitably, some of the most insightful of these taboo-breaking contemporary heretics write with regard to issues of sexual politics from what might be called a ‘masculinist’, or ‘men’s rights’ perspective. Notable among them are figures such as Glenn Sacks, Angry Harry, Steve Moxon, Ally Fogg and Rich Zubaty.

Organizations such as the National Coalition For Men (NCFM) also usefully exploit the opportunities provided by New Media by maintaining active websites and online publications. These together provide something notably absent from mainstream media perspectives on gender relations, be they liberal, conservative, communist or socialist – namely a male perspective or ‘A Voice for Men’ (which is, incidentally, the name of another prominent and excellent website providing exactly that).

Other excellent sites focus on more specific issues that run counter to feminist orthodoxy (e.g. Community of the Wrongly Accused, formerly the False Rape Society) or deal with more general issues (e.g. the Human Stupidity website, which focuses on politically correct taboos more generally), but often touch on issues of men’s rights. This list is not, of course, exhaustive.

However, although I have referred in the title to this section to ‘The Fall of Feminist Dogma’, this is not to say that the Feminist Dogma is now a mere thing of history, nor even that its collapse is imminent. On the contrary, the grip of feminism on the mainstream media remains as powerful as ever. All that has occurred is that the hold of the mainstream media itself over the public’s access to information and political commentary has itself been somewhat weakened.

Even the significance of this change should not be exaggerated. Even today, for the vast majority of people – namely those 90% of the population unable or unwilling to think for themselves or ‘swim against the current’ and hence lacking the motivation to seek out alternative viewpoints – the mainstream media remains by far the most important source of news, information and political opinion. Just because people now have greater opportunity to seek out alternative perspectives on and alternative sources of information about current affairs does not necessarily mean that they have an inclination to do so[68].

Therefore, I have thus far focussed on mainstream media commentators, activists and authors, not because I am a Luddite or am unaware of the burgeoning ‘manosphere’ – but rather because, even today, mainstream media remains important as the medium though which most people’s understanding of politics and current affairs is filtered.

After all, the unique feature of the internet (the precise feature that has enabled it to successfully shatter the politically correct orthodoxy of the mainstream media) is, after all, that anyone is free to publish anything – howsoever outrageous, heretical, iconoclastic, polemical, defamatory or just plain badly-written – without first having to navigate the filtering process previously presided over by editors and publishers and other custodians and guardians of what qualifies as the boundaries of ‘acceptable thought’[69].

This feature represents both an advantage and a disadvantage of internet-based commentary. On the one hand, it provides a sphere of genuine freedom of speech increasingly rare in an era dominated by the contemporary taboos of that Modern McCarthyism in our Midst, namely political correctness. On the other, it lacks any mechanism of quality control.

While publishers and editors are, sure enough, responsible in large part for enforcing the contemporary censorship that has prevented open debate on feminism and other issues, they have also provided some (admittedly often barely apparent) degree of quality control largely absent in the burgeoning blogosphere. In short, whereas those published in the mainstream media are almost automatically conferred a readership as of right by virtue of the outlet provided to them, internet commentators have to fight for to be heard in a ruthless process of natural selection amongst literally millions of others.

As a consequence, in addition to insightful heterodox writers denied a voice in the mainstream media because of the heretical nature of their views, the internet also provides an outlet for all manner of paranoid conspiracy theorists, cranks and mentally-ill extremists with delusions of intellectual coherence.

Compared other hobbies to which such maladjusted malcontents are typically drawn (e.g. serial killing) blogging is, to be sure, is a comparatively harmless outlet. It does, however, create a problem both for the discerning reader and the aspiring writer – namely, how is worthwhile reading material to be detected amid the dross and deafening background noise when any lunatic with an internet connection, a modicum of basic literacy and an excess of time on their hands is entitled inflict their streams of consciousness upon the populace.

It is into this world that I proudly plunge myself in launching ‘Men’s Rights Review – MRR’. This publication aims to provide something lacking among both mainstream media and New Media – namely, a scholarly yet radical malculist perspective on gender relations, sex discrimination and the culture of misandry, fully referenced and with all claims and observations, wherever possible, comprehensively sourced, offering an unapologetically male perspective on society, politics and current affairs.

Thank you for taking the time to seek out and read ‘Men’s Rights Review’. I hope you will find it an original and enlightening read. Please check regularly for new posts.

________________________

Endnotes

[1] Of course, many modern feminists continue to cling to their status as radicals. To buttress this claim, they are forced, with each new feminist-sponsored reform that receives legislative and governmental backing, to invent new demands, each increasingly preposterous as compared to what has gone before it (e.g. integrating the armed services, undermining and subverting what remains of the civil liberties of defendants in rape trials). Not only is preposterousness forced upon them by the fact that their less patently unreasonable demands have already long previously been met, but the very preposterousness itself, I suspect, commends the proposals to their feminist framers precisely because it makes their implementation by government less probable and hence allows them both (1) to continue to claim that women are still oppressed because their demands have not been met and (2) to cling on to their treasured status as radicals – all the while avoiding the inconvenient persecution to which genuine radicals – not least, as we will see, the opponents of feminism – are typically subject.

[4]Against Women’s Lib by Murray Rothbard(originally published as ‘The Great Women’s Liberation Issue: Setting It Straight’ in The Individualist, May 1970). Of course, Rothbard’s essay, along with Vilar’s polemic, themselves represented all-too-rare exceptions to the general rule whereby opposition to feminism was non-existent.

[5] Lest anyone doubt the scale of the transformation, one example suffices to illustrate marginal status of early twentieth-century feminism, even among radicals. In the thirties, socialist and radical George Orwell was able to deplore the association of feminism with socialism and communism as liable to discredit the latter, writing that “one sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England [emphasis added]” (Road to Wigan Pier). These days, of course, the open embrace of feminism across the political spectrum means that it is more likely that feminism would be discredited by any residual association it might still be perceived to have with socialism, let alone with communism, rather than the converse.

[6] This suggestion was first made by pioneering Marxist-Masculist Ernest Belfort Bax who claimed as early as 1913 that “the Anti-man agitation forms a capital red herring for drawing the popular scent off class opposition by substituting sex antagonism in its place” (The Fraud of Feminism: p76).

[7] The effect on wages was especially pronounced because these new female employees could afford to work for less, undercutting their male competitors, because, unlike the latter, they were under no obligation provide for a wife and children in addition to themselves, but rather typically supplemented their own income with a portion of that of their husband. This has led author, activist and artist Rich Zubaty to controversially contend “feminism was the biggest scab labor movement in history“.

[9]No More Sex War: p123-4. This interpretation is also compatible with columnist Rod Liddle’s thesis that political correctness as a whole can be viewed in Marxist terms as promoting the interests of the ruling class (see The Politics of PleasantvilleSpectator, Jan 21 2006). Liddle himself focuses primarily on the issue of immigration, which he argues similarly provides cheap labour, benefiting wealthy employers and consumers, but undercutting the indigenous proletariat and obligin them to reside in ethnically-divided and conflictual communities. This interpretation can easily be extended to feminism, given that women also increased the supply of labour, driving down wages and also represented cheap labour, able to undercut men (see note [7] above).

[11] For example, in the laboratory, male subjects consistently refrain from inflicting electric shocks on female subjects in circumstances where they show no compunctions about similarly punishing males (see Felson, RB 2000 The Normative Protection of Women from ViolenceSociological Forum 15(1): 91-116).

[13] According to data cited by Joshua Goldstein men represent 58% of fatalities from war across the world, despite the fact that, once children are factored in, adult men are only a small minority of the world population (War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa: p400). More dramatically, Goldstein reports that of 17,000 people treated by the International Committee of the Red Cross from 1991 until the end of the century, only 35% were women, children under 16 or men over 50 even though together these groups comprise the vast majority of the population (Ibid.).

[16] In fact, many men may have been less than willing. Instead they may have been coerced at gunpoint by the ship’s crew. However, given that the crew-members in question were themselves male, this itself represents a form of male chivalry.

[25] For example, a search of the archives of the Guardian newspaper for the phrase”violence against women” produced 30,900 results, almost a hundred times as many as the phrase “violence against men”, which managed just 330 hits. Lest any one assume that this a bias restricted to the feminist-invested political left, an identical search conducted in the archives of another UK newspaper, ostensibly from the opposite end of the political spectrum, The Telegraph found that, whereas the phrase the phrase “violence against men” produced just eighteen articles, the phrase “violence against women” produced over five hundred. Neither is the problem restricted to the UK. The New York Times produced 1,824 hits for “violence against women”, whereas for “violence against men” there were only 19 hits. New Media does little better. A google search for the exact phrase “violence against women” produced 14,200,000 hits, whereas “violence against men” managed 268,000. A more in-depth analysis of anti-male bias in Canada’s ‘newspaper of record’ is provided by academic Adam Jones: Jones, A. (1992) The Globe and Males: The Other Side of Gender Bias in Canada’s National Newspaper(Edmonton: Gender Issues Education Foundation, 1992).

“In 1992, a rumor was circulated that Murray Straus [a prominent researcher in this field] had beaten his wife and sexually harassed his students. Straus fought back as best he could and in one instance was able to elicit a written apology from a domestic violence activist. Richard Gelles [another prominent researcher in this field and sometime collaborator of Straus] claims that whenever male researchers question exaggerated findings on domestic battery, it is never long before the rumors begin circulating that he is himself a batterer.”

[46] This is again a parallel with earlier religious dogmas. Early atheists, or probable and suspected atheists, like Thomas Hobbes and David Hume took the precaution of never explicitly identifying themselves as such, or even, in the case of Hobbes, explicitly denying it in order to avoid persecution.

[51]The Myth of Male Power (which I have reviewed here): p6; Farrell also talks of “the legitimate issues of the women’s movement” (Ibid.), claiming that society is “both patriarchal and matriarchal, both male and female dominated” (p10) and that “both sexes made themselves slaves to the other sex in different ways” and “neither sex can accurately be called oppressed” (p30), professing to be “in favour of neither a women’s movement or a men’s movement but [rather] a gender transition movement” (p10).

[52] For example, his book’s blurbs frequently tout his dubious distinction as being the only man in the US to be elected three times to the Board of Directors of the feminist National Organization for Women in New York City.

[55] Ironically, the main smear directed at Farrell, not only relates in no way to his more recent championing of men’s rights, but actually concerns comments he allegedly made regarding incest (he claims to have been misquoted) during an interview conducted over thirty years ago – at which time he was in fact a leading male feminist! Therefore, if anyone is guilty by association with the views purportedly expressed by Farrell, it would appear to be the feminists themselves, who at that time continued to associate with him and, in many cases, champion his work!

[56] For example, a talk scheduled due to be presented by Farrell at the University of Toronto on November 16 2012 was disrupted by feminist protesters, a video of whom is available on Youtube that I have also linked to in the text.

[58] Similarly, some critics of so-called ‘affirmative action’ oppose this practice, not on the obvious grounds that it is manifestly unfair to white males against whom it systematically discriminates, but rather because, by implying that they are unable to make the grade without assistance, it is supposedly ‘patronising’ to its intended beneficiaries and leaves a cloud of suspicion over their qualifications and accomplishments. Similarly, paid maternity leave for new mothers is opposed, not because it is reserved for women and therefore discriminatory against male employees, nor even because it imposes an unfair burden on employers and on the economy as a whole, but rather because it creates a (further) rational economic incentive for employers to evade this burden by discriminating against women in choosing whom to hire in the first place. This tendency to focus on the adverse impact on women of what is plainly discrimination against men was taken to its perverse nadir by Hillary Clinton, who, in her address to the ‘First Ladies’ Conference on Domestic Violence’ (an ironic venue for her to address given her own alleged history of spousal abuse), claimed:

[68] After all, if vast swathes of the populace were indeed inclined to seek out non-mainstream viewpoints, then, even before the development of the internet, entrepreneurs would have capitalized on this demand by establishing publications catering to this demand and the viewpoint in question, and the media catering to it, would not have remained non-mainstream very long.

[69] This lack of both censorship and quality control also characterises the self-publishing industry and of vanity presses, although works published in this way are less easily obtainable.